


Cycle

by SeverinadeStrango



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls II
Genre: Arcturus Ebner Belongs to @Abyssal_Paladin, Betrayal, Brutality, Circular Thinking, Drabble, Gen, Internal Monologue, Mentions of Murder, Paranoia, Severina's April 2019 Requests, Surrealism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 21:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18821506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeverinadeStrango/pseuds/SeverinadeStrango
Summary: What if, at the end of it all, he's come right back around to the very beginning?





	Cycle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Abyssal_Paladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abyssal_Paladin/gifts).



> Arcturus Ebner is an OC created by my friend, @Abyssal_Paladin. This was written for James as part of an art/writing trade, but I'd also considered it part of my requests for the month of April 2019.

There was no other choice. 

This was the only way things could be, there was no choice he acted for the good of the people for the good of what humanity remained in this cursed world no choice no alternative it was better to trap himself here in this corner than to face the possibility, the terrifying possibility that he still had agency over what he had done. What _he_ did. That there was no other force behind his hand when he’d climbed to the top, when he’d assumed that throne and the responsibilities and burdens that came with it. 

As if out of some perverse drive, Arcturus the Betrayed, the one who felt as if he was branded into the Throne itself, looked down at his hands, turning them over again and again, looking for something that he could not find. Blood. Cuts. The screams of all those he had cut down to get here.

He remembered seeing those things upon the Old King’s hands, and the hatred that it had inspired within him, the hatred on behalf of all those that had suffered under his unrelenting, brutal, merciless rule. Every strike and every blow, every spray of blood that he’d felt on his skin and tasted on his cracked lips, it had all been for the sake of the people and to stave off what would have been.

And now he was here, wrestling alone in this dark chamber on the cold Throne which ate through his robes, into his skin, he felt it like a horrid creature perching itself precariously on his chest. 

You are nothing more than no no no _you are nothing more than he ever was_ Arcturus gripped the chilling armrests of the throne, trying to tear himself away but failing to do so, from the throne, from his past, from the family that he was inevitably linked to by blood by body and that, that _wasn’t_ something that he could run from. If he could he would pick up everything in his vicinity and shatter it, including himself including everything he had ever built before if it would cut him away from his own unwilling legacy.

But he could not. And that was unreasonable. And that he knew. He had a duty to those who leaned upon him, if he was to be better than his tyrant of a father, if he was to be above that which he had vanquished. Fix the damage patch up the wounds repair the old bones of the people. That was his duty, his only purpose – and it was only once that was done that he would finally be able to lay down for that breathless, stilling sleep.


End file.
